India-based fintech BharatPe has gotten an in-principle authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as online payment aggregator (PA). The RBI instructed non-bank companies offering PA services to apply for authorisation by 30 June 2021.

The deadline was later extended to 30 September 2021. Over 185 fintech firms and start-ups had submitted applications for a PA licence. The few firms authorised to operate come under the direct purview of the central bank.

Since then, a 100%-owned subsidiary of the BharatPe, named Resilient Payments, has won the approval. What is a payment aggregator? A payment aggregator provides payment services to merchants and e-commerce sites by accepting payment instruments from customers. They pool the funds received from customers and transfer them to merchants after a certain time.

Their services include facilitating integrated payment options such as transactions of cash and cheque and online and offline touchpoints, besides allowing bank transfers for merchants without the need to set up accounts directly with a bank. Other companies that received approval In December 2022, digital payment processing firm Worldline ePayments India and fintech startup Paysharp had also received in-principle authorisation from the RBI to act as a PA. Around that time, several other fintech players, including Open, Infibeam, and Cashfree, got the nod for the PA licence.

In a new set of guidelines in March 2020, the RBI said all PAs have to be authorised by it. Officials from BharatPe said that this in-principle approval will help catapult their expansion plans and enable them to reach out to millions of more unbanked and underserved merchants, provide digital payment acceptance solutions, and in turn, get them to be a part of the Digital India mission. The final authorisation is subject to fulfilment of certain conditions.

BharatPe will now commence work on fulfilling the said conditions within the prescribed timeline and launch the said online PA business upon the receipt of the final authorisation from RBI. .